A Review of Urban Water-energy Linkages in End-use: A Call for Joint Demand Studies

Aims: A literature review to show the importance of combined water and energy demand end-use studies and to illustrate techniques that can be applied for these analyses.

Study Design: A review of energy-related water end-use and water-related energy end-use studies.

Place and Duration of Study: Cited studies on urban water/energy use are mainly based on the work done in the UK, Australia or the US, which has been completed over the course of the past decades but mainly in recent years.

Methodology: An overview included studies focused on the different energy and water end-uses in cities, their quantification and methods for estimating those end-uses using aggregate indicators such as total energy or water use. Particular focus was given to the estimation of water-related energy and energy-related water.

Results: Up-to-date research has been focused on the disaggregation of the actual end-use for energy and for water separately, estimating the corresponding water/energy use. There is considerable uncertainty about the joint end-use of water and energy, and the implications of this linkage for the overall water and energy supply at the city level.

Conclusion: Combined water/energy end-use is an important end-use component. Water and energy end-uses have been studied extensively in isolation using empirical approaches. However, there is a need for empirical studies of the combined water/energy end-uses that can greatly reduce the uncertainties on the feedbacks between the two systems, and benefit both utilities and end-users.